I remember growing up and thinking about how awesome it would be to have video phones. Of course, I imagined a terminal that looked like a USA Today newsstand sans newspaper, but of course had a video screen, a camera hidden somewhere and a handset resembling the phones that are round on either end.

I've used FaceTime once or twice on my phone. The most recent time I used it, I kept thinking about how this was different than the vision that I had in my head.

Now there's an even more fantastic thing that exists in the world today: video phone mixed with real-time translation. I don't know how smooth the actual product is, though Im' sure it's not as smooth as depicted in the ad, but I do know that the technology will get better over time as hardware gets faster and cheaper, combined with faster and cheaper Internet connectivity.

Now imagine this for a 3.0 concept: each user wears headphones and the phones translate in realtime much like watching a proceeding at the UN. That's as close as you can get to solving the language barrier short of everyone speaking a common language.